Intuitive Surgical Shares Dip 0.9% as Volume Plummets 20% to Rank 126th Despite Analyst Upgrades

On August 7, 2025, Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) closed at $470.38, down 0.90% from the previous session. The stock’s trading volume fell to $0.83 billion, a 20.27% drop from the prior day, ranking it 126th among all equities in terms of liquidity. The decline came despite recent analyst upgrades and revised earnings guidance.

Leerink Partners analyst Mike Kratky raised his price target for ISRG from $587 to $593, maintaining a Buy rating. The adjustment followed the company’s strong Q2 2025 performance, with revenue and EPS exceeding estimates by 4% and 14%, respectively. Kratky highlighted robust revenue growth across all segments, increased da Vinci system placements in the U.S., and elevated global procedure growth. The firm also revised its full-year outlook, projecting 15.5% to 17% international procedure growth for da Vinci systems in 2025, up from 17% in 2024.

A strategy of purchasing the top 500 stocks by daily trading volume and holding them for one day generated a 166.71% return from 2022 to the present, outperforming the benchmark by 137.53%. This outperformance underscores liquidity concentration’s role in short-term performance, particularly in volatile markets, where high-volume stocks often capture momentum-driven opportunities.